(no subject)

I am up much earlier than usual because I wasn’t able to get back to sleep after Scott got up at 5:00. That happens a couple of times a month. I generally stay in bed until he leaves for work, an hour after he gets up, but I’m not willing to toss and turn another two hours just to keep Cordelia happy. She doesn’t like it when I’m up with her in the morning, but she can deal with it occasionally.

We had friends over last night and did a little bit of getting our characters acquainted with each other for the Stargate game we’ve been trying to get going since October. I need to go over my character and figure out what she can do. Scott did all of the work to create her because, at the time, I didn’t have the energy to spare. I’m not sure he filled in all of the stuff that I will need.

Cordelia wants me to tell our cleaning lady not to do anything in her room from now on. (Last week, she picked up and washed every scrap of clothing from Cordelia’s floor.) I pointed out that Cordelia still can’t change her own sheets (she has a loft bed. Changing the sheets is a fairly big undertaking). Cordelia thinks she’d be fine if she never changed her sheets at all. This from someone who just spent a couple of months studying disease ecology.

This whole thing is difficult because the cleaning lady has explicitly said that she considers Cordelia a granddaughter and because the cleaning lady is right in thinking that Cordelia’s room is a mess. I tend to think that a teenager’s room being a mess is just kind of to be expected, and I know Cordelia’s feeling territorial and wanting privacy. I may try to distract the cleaning lady from the stuff Cordelia doesn’t want her to touch by asking her to help me empty the closet where Cordelia’s old toys live. It really, really needs doing, and Cordelia has said more than once that she doesn’t care about anything in there.

There’s also this— In the years the cleaning lady has been coming, I have almost never been able to get her to not do some bit of cleaning that she thinks is important.

(And now, Cordelia’s up, and she says no to the toy closet idea. She says there’s nothing in there anyway. I need to check on that, but I don’t want to go digging in there if she’s against it.)

I bought myself three new shirts from Blair. I was concerned when I tried on of them on because the sleeves were longer than I’m comfortable with, but now that I’ve washed them, they seem to be okay. I bought two of the same shirt for Cordelia, but she has refused even to look at them because they’re long sleeved and, according to her, that’s not her style.

I’m trying to decide if it’s worth sending them back given the work involved. The shirts were $10-$12 each which is not completely trivial, but I think we’d have to pay the postage to return them (Blair might refund that, too. Some companies do, and some don’t).

evalerie would your daughter be able to and want to wear long sleeved mock turtlenecks, women’s size small? They’re cotton knit. One is jade green. The other is red (technically claret, but red is good enough). For that matter, what size do you wear?

Scott bought a new paddle for our mixing bowl. The old one had enamel on it that kept flaking off into whatever we were mixing, and the underlying metal tended to bleed into the batter in a way that made me uncomfortable. The new paddle has silicone edging that looks like a really good idea. Unfortunately, the dratted thing is too tall for the model of mixer we’ve got. With it attached, it’s not possible to lower the upper part of the mixer fully. It ends up angled at about thirty degrees instead of parallel to the counter the way it’s supposed to be. I’m not willing to use it like that because I’m more than a little dubious about the safety of it.

For the first time in a couple of years, I think I have an idea for where to start the next chapter of Rheotaxis. I’m not going to try to start it immediately, but I’m going to make notes so that I don’t forget and then let the idea simmer for a bit while I write other stuff. I’ve got seven prompt related things that I want to do.

I don’t actually expect I’ll get through all of them. One of them already wants to be epically long. One requires a fairly detailed canon review. A third requires some wiki research before I can even start trying to come up with an idea. A fourth is very close to something I’ve already written, and I’m having trouble coming up with a different take. The fifth, I have barely a glimmer of an idea on and am simply not ready to start. The sixth has foundered on the main character being OOC. I’m actually working on the seventh prompt.

I’ve almost finished the third of the library books that can’t be renewed. That just leaves the one I could renew but have already renewed four times. I will read some of that tonight and decide whether or not I’m going to keep going.

Another Writing Related Book to Give Away

I have another writing book that I’m willing to give away. I haven’t read this one since before Cordelia was born, so I'm hazy on the details beyond what I can get from opening it here and there now.

The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers by Elizabeth Benedict. 1996.

This book is not aimed at writers of romance or erotica, and the author is a little snotty about sex scenes that are meant to be hot just for the sake of being hot. There’s very little about mechanics and a good bit about focusing on the things that matter to the characters and way that bad sex can make a good story or that things that aren’t overtly sexual can be sexual in practice.

There are a lot of short sections written by other people, mostly literary fiction authors, who talk about sex in their own works. There are also a lot of excerpts from sex scenes that made an impression on the author. There are eight exercises at the very end of the book.

ETA: Since nobody has expressed interest in more than 24 hours, I'm sticking this with the books to donate to the library book sale. I expect we'll take those in on Sunday the 7th, some time during the afternoon. If someone asks for it before then, I'll pull it out, but otherwise, it'll be gone.

(no subject)

Hm. I’ve been looking at my bookshelves and trying to decide what can go. Some things are easy— I’m never going to reread anything by Laurie King, too anxiety provoking. Scott isn’t interested, and Cordelia has decided that all mysteries are evil. But Dave Barry? Doonesbury? Various encyclopedias and histories on interesting topics that I’ve had for twenty years and never opened? I don’t think any of us are going to read Dickens or Alcott, but aren’t those the sort of thing that one should keep just because one should own them? Are there really books like that?

Will I ever reread any Marian Babson? Margery Allingham? Margot Arnold? Christopher Stasheff? Samurai Cat? Should I keep my Baum Oz books given that Cordelia hated the first book and now considers herself too old for such things? What about Pippi and Mrs Piggle-Wiggle?

I’ve kept a lot of books because simply looking at them carried me into their stories again, but now, I’ve forgotten the stories of so very many of those books that it doesn’t work so well any more. Also, most of my books are in places that I can’t get at very easily.

It’s not as if I have anyone to loan these books to at this point. Cordelia has people she lends books to, but I don’t.

At any rate, I’m looking at books and asking myself questions. Do I remember this book? Will I reread it? Could I write fic for it and enjoy doing? Could I draw on it for story ideas for a game or a novel? Do I take pleasure in simply owning the book, in revisiting the story and characters by looking at the outside of the book? Is there useful research material here that I can’t find more easily online? Did a friend/relative give me this book or are there memories tied up in this book for other reasons? Is it beautiful in some way?

It may be as interesting to me to note what I keep as what I don’t.